Monday, July 27, 2009

Pizza fail

Now, I know you might be thinking that you would never eat chain pizza, especially not suburban chain pizza. Youz a lie, as we say down home. That butter-soaked focaccia bread they make the pan pizza on is so good you don't even ask what "pork topping" is.

We don't have a lot of the Hut in these parts. This is Papa Gino's country. And sometimes I want that medium pan in a way that the Target/airport version can't provide. I want it brought out with that speculum they serve it with, I want the girl to tell me the pan is hot. Italian sausage and mushroom, every corporate-prepared crispy bit.

I have to go a bit out of town for this quest -- and not just any town. Searstown.

In typical Mass parlance, we insist on calling it what it is no longer named. Searstown in now the Mall at Whitney Field. yawn. Within a crazy snarl of shopping centers, which in younger regions of our land, would sprawl, there is a Hut.

So that's where I went.

As I enter, a worker at the cashier window (like a racetrack) is yelling "Tell her we can't seat anybody!" She didn't mean me; she meant the hostess-her. But "hi. hello." nice greeting.

They can't seat anybody because the computers are down. Nor can they take orders, make food, or give you your take out, because the computers are down. There are 8 staff I can count without turning my head, a kitchen full of pizza ingredients..... She banged the keyboard as a demonstration of their helplessness.

If I didn't spend all day and some of the night explaining the innovative nuances of customer service, I might have explained how the pioneers ran their businesses. But I tire easily.

A man came in to get his order, and she offered to give it to him if he paid in exact change. He left for an ATM.

I assume you have wheat bread...and a toaster of some kind...?

I drove back to Clinton, to where local businessmen still sell a pizza or a beer (or both) every 20 feet, and though they don't throw the dough anymore, they will make a well-done. They will give you a little something if you chat them up. They will have a newspaper on the counter while you wait. And for $6.50 you really can't complain.

Unless it is to PIZZA HUT.

Even that workflow was a little unpleasant, but by experimenting with the dropdown menus, I was able to construct a Complaint-Employee-Did not resolve situation email. Then I blamed the corporation for not a) having a disaster recovery plan and b) not raising their managers to think they can solve their own problems by making change out of a cigar box and calling the corp HQ or another store to verify cards for them. "As I was leaving," I wrote in my 500 character space, "employees were locking the door at the dinner hour."

Amazing to think that in a kitchen of food, ovens, and staff, a restaurant has to close.

Amazing to think I would rant like an old guy in a cardigan over something that was just going to make me sick.

I had a similar experience at a Wendy's (it was late and I was tired and hungry). After much waiting (15 mins) and contemplating just heading home and making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I learned the registers WERE working but they were not spitting out the receipts. Apparently without the paper they don't know what to cook... ~SJL